The Challenge of Too Much Product

Perhaps only 10 years ago, retailers struggled with the idea of offering enough unique products to their customers.  A wider assortment of merchandise along shelves meant greater risk of stocking slow-moving goods.  That was a decade ago.

Let’s fast-forward to the present:  online retail sales figures are skyrocketing and e-commerce activity continues to flourish despite a sagging global economy.  When the convenience of dropshipping was introduced to modernized e-commerce, retailers no longer needed to stock products at all.  Although today’s online retailer benefits from these advantages, a new kind of problem is emerging:  too much product.

Unlike older brick-and-mortar retail operations that maintained large physical inventories, today’s retailer can virtually offer millions of products to customers within days of first opening their website presence.  This glut of goods has its challenges, including a retailer’s ability to intelligently communicate about products.  An informed customer is a happy customer, which is why online resellers should fully take advantage of product expertise available to them by their wholesale distributor or manufacturer.